Done for the moment

I had to finish up this week because tomorrow I leave for QSDS. Just when I was really starting to get the hang of it! The last batch of screens was almost exclusively torn paper stripings. I really like these alot. I made some thermofax screens from some of these torn paper results and combining these with the DSP makes some really interesting designs.

This piece of fabric was somebody else's in my class at QSDS last year. For some reason she didn't like it and threw it out. I grabbed it. It has really nice feathery lines which are the background. The strips are my torn paper and look how cool those outlines are.

One more. I learned several things. In order to see the deconstructing outlines of the shapes you have to screen with a color that is lighter than what's on the screen. A second thing I learned is that leaving the paper stuck on the back of the screen while doing the pulling makes for even more interesting designs. Good outlines but also terrific patterning.

More of the holey paper strips.

And this is an image I used to make a thermofax screen. It really captures the look of the wrinkly paper. I had to enhance it a little in Photoshop so that there is a little more definition between the wrinkles.

So now the fabric is packed in a box and all my stuff is packed into my car. I'm leaving tomorrow morning at 7am and driving to Martha's house. Then I will have to reload my stuff into her car, and we will be off. We usually arrive in Columbus around 3 or 4pm, depending on how many stops. I should probably research in which state the gas will be cheapest since we hit Maryland (of course) then West Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia again, then Ohio. Our first pit stop is always at Sideling Hill which is a huge gouge cut out of the mountain so the road can go through. It exposes a very interesting geological formation and there's a very informative display in the Exhibit Center. I like geology so this spot fascinates me.

More fabrics and an invitation

I received this postcard in the mail yesterday. It's from Images 08, held at Penn State University. This used to be Crafts National but they've changed the eligibility to artists in the states surrounding Pennsylvania. I don't know why since they didn't include me in the decision making process. But they did choose to put my piece on the postcard - upper right hand corner. It sort of doesn't go with the rest of the works on the postcard, but I'm not going to complain.

The show opens on June 11 with the reception on Friday the 13th. Hmmm. You are invited. I won't be there as I will be at QSDS for the Master Class with Sue Benner. Nine days of class - I think I will be very tired.
And here is more fabric. The smudgey background on this is from the deconstruction, but then I used a thermofax screen to directly apply the cross hatch pattern.
On this piece I took the hole-y paper strips that had dye paste on them, wetted them slightly, then pressed directly onto the fabric. There was enough dye paste to transfer the design but not so much that it's very obvious.

And more...

I really like this one. I used torn paper strips to create the vertical stripes in a deep blue/green. In the open area between the stripes I used a curved tip syringe to draw a thin line with dark cherry. Screened with a yellowish-brown paste. When the green began to deconstruct it showed a crystal-like pattern. Difficult to see in the small picture, but click on the image to view it larger.

The storm drain cover again. Makes such a wonderful pattern.

I found a roll of stiff paper with little holes in it at the hardware store. I have no idea what its intended use is, but it makes a great resist. The little tiny holes are really cool.

Here's another view.

I have alot of fabric that has been painted and I wanted to see if the paint will resist the dye. The answer is "sometimes". This fabric had blue scribbles all over it and they were fairly heavily drawn. Where the dye overlays the paint scribble, the dye is a little lighter. In some places it's totally resisted. Also, washing this fabric softened up the paint; there were some stiff sections where I had globbed the paint on and these are much softer now. I think some of the paint might have come off. The fabric was ugly to begin with and I don't I've improved it very much. But maybe in small pieces it will work somewhere.

More results

A few results from the previous session. This screen was made using a storm drain cover placed under the screen and then I pulled the dye paste across it. The dye color is dark cherry, which is nearly black. The fabric used here was pale blue and I screened used yellow print paste, which resulted in green. The dark colors are the dark cherry deconstructing. The edges are fantastic!

This is the fabric pictured in my previous post after it's been washed. There is a considerable amount of lightening up, alot of which is due to the fact that the previous picture is of wet fabric, which always looks darker. I would have preferred the darker color, but then I always do. Some great deconstructed edges on this one also.

And another section of the same piece of fabric. You can see faint outlines of the circle furnace grid that I also used on this piece.

Well, it's time to get back to the dyepots!

First results

Here are some results of the first DSP session. Some of these pictures are blurry, sorry about that. I should know better. This first piece started as a pale yellow fabric, which you can still see in the areas between the screened stuff and in the blocked out area of the centers. I'm getting some good edges here.

This is construction fencing. The base fabric was a pale purple and the dye paste was a dark purple. Excellent edges here.

Base fabric might be pale blue or green, I don't remember. The print paste was brushed onto the screen with a paintbrush in no particular design, so it just makes an interesting texture as it deconstructs.

The background fabric was a definite orange-y low water dye piece. The screen was red print paste in a scribble with a curved tip syringe. The first pulls produced pretty faint outlines but they became much more obvious as the line began to deconstruct. Very interesting images here.

This last image is of a piece with the print paste still on. It hasn't been washed. I want to be able to compare the before and after to see how much disappears during the washout process. This started as white fabric. I used two different screens and then covered most all of the fabric with a goldish wash. I suspect that the wash color will nearly disappear.

Makin' Fabric

I'm devoting the next two and a half weeks to deconstructed screen printing. I plan to take this fabric to QSDS and use it in the class I'm taking, a Master Class with Sue Benner. The class lasts nine days. I think I will be exhausted.

I spent the past weekend (in between doing Memorial Day Weekend stuff) soda soaking fabric that I pulled from my stash. For this session all the fabric I'm using will already have a color on it. This will introduce another factor into my dye color choices. I think I have about 30 yards of fabric ready to print (but that's just a wild guess). I strung up a clothesline outside to dry the fabrics so I wouldn't have to wipe up dripping soda ash from the basement floor. It was very colorful.

I also mixed up some print paste using Prochem's premix. I used this last summer and had a problem with the print paste rewetting on the screens and oozing. So far I haven't had that problem; I guess that's the difference between May and August. Once again I have probably overdone it on the amount of dye to use - I have 13 little dye pots - several reds, several yellows, several blues, and grey and black (which I probably will barely use.) It's not possible for me to resist all the different colors.

Last night I prepared the screens and this morning I used them. Right now the fabric is wrapped in black plastic and batching in the sun. The sun is getting low and behind the trees and they've been batching for at least 5 hours so I think it's okay to rinse them out tonight. I'm eager to see what I get.

When I was ready to begin creating the screens I had a mental blank - couldn't remember all the different methods I had used in Kerr's class and in later sessions. Spent a while hunting up my notes which once I found them turned out to be rather sparse. My friend Linda in Belgium and I traded notes last summer as we were both doing dsp so I read those also. It turns out that she's working on a new technique right now so we're trading notes again. I'm not going to describe what she's doing because it's for an article in Quilting Arts.

I also have Kerr's DVD on DSP and I think I'll review that also. I'll post some pictures when I get some results.

A Week of Meetings

The last seven days have been chock full of meetings. Regular meetings of the second Tuesday, second Wednesday, and third Friday all fell in the same week. Then there were the special meetings on Saturday and yesterday. I think I've put nearly 500 miles on my car in the past week because only one was close by. Two were in other states even. And I even opted out of another meeting that also fell on the second Tuesday. And everything was fiber related. Am I crazy?

Can't answer that particular question, but I think it's important to be connected to other people when I spend so much solitary time in my studio. It's great to see what other people are doing and to hear about their successes and failures. We can share resources and techniques and explore new friendships. I know that I am introverted and can have a difficult time making new friends and so going to these meetings is important.

I received notice the other day that two of my pieces were selected for the regional SAQA show Amazing Art Quilts to be held at the Augusta Arts Center in Staunton, Virginia. The entry for this show was a throwback: they only accepted slides. So when the return letter arrived I could feel the envelope and knew that there were slides enclosed, and it seemed like all 6 (3 full and 3 detail) were still in the envelope. Made me hesitate to open it - I mean, who likes rejection? But when I unfolded the accompanying letter and it began 'Congratulations' I looked at the slides. They kept the full shots for the 2 accepted pieces and returned the details.

These are the pieces. The first is Summer Solstice and is a big piece - 69" long and 42" wide. It is a former Quilt National reject.

The second piece is Ventanas: Reflections and is a former SDA Members show entry, which means it's 52" long by 18" wide and is double sided. I don't have a picture handy of the reverse side. The background is whole cloth painted and then screen printed with 'window' images. The foreground is appliqued strips to form more window imagery. I like this window imagery. I should more of it.

Today I plan to spend lots of time in the studio and also get to the gym. I've missed my normal workouts because of these meetings and it makes me crazy.

Public Forum

Last Saturday was the Public Forum at Maryland Art Place. The nine artists, two writers, and one curator sat at a not-quite-long enough table and responded to questions from the moderator. In my previous post I mentioned some of the questions and I'm pleased to say that I was able to speak up and not sound like an idiot (at least I don't think I did.) The audience had wonderful things to say about the art and several people told me directly how much they enjoyed my pieces. For a review of the forum and some pictures, visit the BMoreArt blog.

I haven't posted many pictures lately so here is a little treat. The azaleas are in full bloom in Baltimore and it's the climax of the spring blooming season, in my opinion. These are in my back yard and I wish the blooms lasted longer than did.

Fabulous new book

I purchased a copy of Martha Sielman's new book Masters: Art Quilts while at the SAQA conference last month. It just arrived and it's a fabulous book. Each of the 40 artists has 10 pages devoted to her or his works, all in full glorious color. I'm thrilled to be able to say that several of my friends are included in this book, so at least I'm associating with the right people. You can purchase it through Amazon or directly from SAQA. It's cheaper through Amazon, but if you purchase it through SAQA, Martha will autograph the book and 55% of the purchase price is dontated to SAQA.

It's May already

I feel as if I haven't posted in months, but it's only been 2 weeks. That's bad enough. Yesterday I finally got back onto my sewing machine and I know I haven't done that for a month. Trying to account for my time I come up with a weekend retreat, the SDA/SAQA Conference and Workshop, a trip to Chicago, a fair amount of time trying to solve a technical problem for my current quilt, and an inordinate amount of time working on my web page. I have changed the look but the major work was in cleaning up the underlying code. There was a lot of useless and conflicting junk in there. I know enough about programming to make myself eternally frustrated.

Anyhow, in the course of my time in Chicago, where I spent several hours volunteering in the SAQA booth at the IQA show, I volunteered to become the SAQA area co-rep for my area. I know I have had some less than complimentary works about SAQA in the past, but in the past few years they have really gotten their act together. And I think that it's not right to continually complain about something and not do anything about it. So I could quit or I could volunteer. One of my complaints has been that in my area we never heard from our rep. So my goal is to be the kind of rep that I would have liked to have had.

I solved the technical problem on my current work, got it sandwiched and pinned, and started quilting on it yesterday. Ouch, my shoulders hurt today. I guess that month off was enough to get out of quilting shape.

Tomorrow is the Public Forum for the Critics' Residency Program that I'm in at the Maryland Art Place. You can see several of my pieces in the picture of the gallery. I received a list of discussion questions so that I can think about what to respond.

A few of the questions: "What is the role of titles in your work? Are they a necessary evil or do they anchor and frame your work in essential ways?" For me, titles are usually an afterthought. Since my work is abstract, the title may or may not impart a meaning. I tried numbering the series for a (short) while, but discovered that I needed actual names in order to keep track of what was what in my head. I have a database in which I keep all the pertinent information about a piece, but there isn't a picture attached. Even so, when I look at my list of quilts and try to figure out what's available to enter and what might be appropriate, a list of numbers just doesn't work very well.

The moderator wants to ask about the issue of figuration vs abstraction. The actual question: "is there an opposition between figuration and abstraction in terms of the philosophy each implies or do you see that as an old and irrelevant argument?" Somebody is going to have to first interpret the question for me, I think. Why do I do abstract work? I've never been really taken with people, especially faces, done in fabric. (Although I can't make that a hard and fast observation, because I have seen fabricated figures that I really like.) It seems that many fiber artists who do that strive for an exactness that is difficult to achieve with discrete pieces of fabric. The goal seems to be how close to a photographic image can they get. Doing that doesn't appeal to me at all and so perhaps my involvement with abstraction is partially the result of the medium in which I'm working. And also the fact that I don't draw very well.

And the last question: "Do you feel any loyalty to a particular esthetic, lineage, or medium?" Yup. My medium is fabric and thread.

Reporting In

First off, a virtual postcard. This show opens next week at the Maryland Art Place in Baltimore. The critics selected wrote about the artists and their artwork and all of this will be presented at the show. I delivered 6 pieces yesterday; they may not have room to hang all of them. On May 3 is the Public Forum in which we will talk about our art and whatever. The program is a mentorship for art critics and the artists selected provide the resources.



Next we have a picture of the workshop I took at the SDA/SAQA Conference in Philadelphia last week. There were half a dozen speaker presentations on Saturday, a tour of the Philadelphia area fiber shows and other places of interest, and a 3 day workshop. I've mentioned already that I was taking Judy Langille's Whole Cloth Composition class, which involves thickened dye, silkscreens, torn paper resists, and thermofax screens. Judy's fiber pieces are whole cloth, something I have not done, and it requires a fair amount of pre-thought and brain processing, which is totally foreign to me. (That didn't really come out right...)



Anyhow, the first 2 days we all were making yardage, not a bad thing in itself, but not the idea of the class. On the third day it began to click and thoughts of composition surfaced. We only had half a table on which to work, so nobody could do anything large. There was a problem in that the weather did not lend itself to pre-soaking the fabric in soda ash (which fixes the dye) and so it was added to the thickened dye. In retrospect, not a good plan because the dye spent itself very quickly (or else there wasn't enough soda ash) because everything came out very pale. Luckily we were able to do some soda soaking before the 3rd day and fabric done then came out as expected, i.e. color saturated.

I expect that the pale pieces will have to hibernate in my stash for a while before I can use them - I need to forget how I expected them to turn out and be happy with how they actually turned out.

This is a picture of the bathroom wall at Snyderman-Works Gallery, where the Fiber Biennial was hanging. Cool.


And these are spools of thread used on weaving looms at the Design Center at Philadelphia University. What a cool place! They have everything from old weaving looms to digital printers. Wouldn't it be fun to be a student there!

Off again

I'm leaving this afternoon for the joint SDA/SAQA Conference in Philadelphia which includes a trip to Art Quilts Elements (formerly Art Quilts at the Sedgewick), and followed by a workshop with Judy Langille. Then a trip to Chicago to visit family and spend a day at the IQF show. So there won't be much posting going on (not that there has been much these last few days).

Last weekend I was at a quilt retreat with 6 friends who gather twice a year. I had a great time even though I was not at a point in my current project that lent itself to working on there. So I had to improvise and just did some ordinary cutting and sewing and spent lots of time visiting. This was my last time in those wretched cabins where the beds are terrible, the showers (if you can get them to work) leak sulfurous water, and the food is barely edible. I'll bet you're dying to know how to book a cabin there, right? Anyhow, I will be away when the group goes in September and next March we will be going to a different place that has real beds, real food, and real showers. And a bigger work room.

This past week I've been spending alot of time relearning some web page programming in order to revise and add to a web page for one of my groups. "Cascading Style Sheets" is a method that's supposed to make the programming easier by removing all sorts of formatting tags from the html language and make things more consistent. However, it's not for the occasional programmer (me) because it's very frustrating. Different browsers interpret the commands differently and trying to make the pages look the same, or at least reasonably the same, is a hair-snatching experience. And I'm not doing anything particularly fancy. But I think, cross my fingers, that I have succeeded in getting what I wanted and now all I have to do is get the members of the group to send me their images. So it may be a while before the pages go live...

Catch up

I've spent the past few days sewing labels and sleeves on quilts, 6 to be exact. Have been letting that particular not-fun task slide, obviously. Last week I shot some slides of two quilts and have really been thinking about the necessity of slides. In the past I always shot an entire roll of 36 slides on one quilt so that I never had to have dupes made. Since nearly everybody is moving towards digital for show entry and there is less need for slides, I opted for doing 2 quilts on one roll. I still have another roll of slide film stored in the freezer and one more pre-paid development mailer, so I will eventually use it. But after that, who knows.

All of my quilts these days are irregularly shaped, with edges that jut out. I like this but it presents a bit of a challenge when determining where to sew the sleeve. With a quilt that has an even and horizontal top edge, it's easy - just mark a point an inch or so down from the top and stitch. But when the top is both uneven and not exactly horizontal, eyeballing it is not going to work. I have to hang the quilt up and adjust it until it looks right, then use a string and a level to mark a horizontal line. Not a lot of extra work, but just enough to be annoying.

My daffodils are opening; here's a few pictures. Sorry if they're a little blurry but it's only 29 degrees outside this morning. Looks like Spring, but doesn't quite feel like it.

And one last note: Free ground shipping on Guild.com for every item purchased through March 31. See my work.

Cover Girl

This is the cover of the brochure that Smith-Kramer Fine Art Services has published for the Surface Design Association's touring exhibit "Sum of the Parts". I'm thrilled to see that they have put my piece on the cover, plus used the detail shot for the background of the rest of the brochure. It's actually quite an elaborate brochure as it unfolds to 6 "pages" wide. There is an explantion about the exhibit, bios for the jurors, a list of the artists, a blurb about the Surface Design Association, and pictures of 6 pieces from the show. Seven, when you include mine. This show will be touring for 3 years. I purchased the CD catalog of the entire show from SDA and for the touring show they selected 100 pieces. I hope it comes to a location near me because I would love to see it for real.

Working

It's much more like Spring than it is Winter these days. I can hear birds singing and see flocks of robins scrounging around in the grass. My daffodils are up about 6 inches (but not yet blooming), the snowdrops are almost finished, and here and there crocus peek through the groundcover. Hooray! In another few weeks I will hang my hummingbird feeder and keep an eye out for the first hummer to show up.

It's cloudy today so the crocus haven't opened up.

The time switch to daylight savings time messes up my inner clock for a few days. I find I'm starting dinner later than usual because it's still too bright out. I guess our bodies are more attuned to the quality of light than we think they are.

And I've been stitching away on my current work. I don't keep track of the amount of time I spend in the studio (although I should if only just to prove to the IRS that yes, this is a job and not just a hobby) but I can estimate based on how many audio books I have listened to while doing this. So far it's 3, with a total of 30 hours, and I'm not finished yet. I have to listen to something while I stitching otherwise it's just too boring.

A few quick shots of the grid quilting. So far I've used only lightweight rayon and cotton threads for this piece. Previously I've used heavy and midweights also, but this piece seems too delicate. The heavy quilting makes the areas that aren't quilted puff up and I'm trying to decide how much I like that. I may add some hand done seed stitching there to reduce the puff. I'll need to watch a movie to do that.

Focus....

Or not...I'm trying but don't seem to be getting anything done. Doing well at avoidance behavior - cleaned up my studio, did the laundry, yada yada. I have something on the design wall that I want to use as the starting point. These are from screens made from a picture of a tree in Paris. They trim all the branches off and the trees get these knobby ends. Then the branches grow out of those knobs. I guess it helps control the size of the trees so they don't get too big. It makes an interesting image. I used the screens to do deconstructed screen printing a la Kerr Grabowski. You can see how the image develops. It looks very wintery to me.






My next step was to make more thermofax screens using the same image but shrinking it down and making multiple tree images on the same screen. Did that and screened some fabric. But when I cut pieces and started putting them on the design wall, nothing happened. That is, nothing aha! happened. It looked like I was just sticking stuff up on the wall. So I've taken it all down and looked for different fabrics and am starting over. Except I can't seem to focus. It's really difficult to make myself stay and work on this, I keep finding other things I "have" to do (like writing this blog). Maybe it's the season.

I can see that Spring is coming - daffodils are up, snowdrops are blooming, the sun is rising earlier and setting later. But for cripes sake, why is Leap Year Day stuck on the end of the worst month - why not put it at the end of June? I know, it doesn't really make any difference, except mentally. I would rather it be March than February. March is not all that great a month either, but it's closer to Spring than February. Or maybe I should move to the Southern Hemisphere.

Last week I went to the opening of a show in which I have work. The group is Fiber Artists of Baltimore and it's been in existence for about 7 years. Unfortunately, this show is the farewell tour, so to speak. The group has fallen apart and even getting work for this show was a struggle. Of the 15 members only 4 of us had any work to submit. It made me think about group dynamics and what makes one group flourish and another die on the vine. Large groups have similar problems but there are usually new members coming in who have the energy to keep things going. But in a small group when the people who are doing all the work get tired of doing it and want to pass the baton and nobody else is willing to pick it up, that's pretty much the end of the group. The original premise of the group was to have it be a professional organization with the intent of promoting our work and having shows. We had two levels of membership - the professional (had to have slides of work, resume, artist statement, etc.) and the associate (just had to pay the dues). That worked for a while but then even some of the "professionals" had difficulty in meeting the requirements, particularly of having good slides of their work.

So then we thought, well, let's abandon what's not working well and continue with what is - everybody enjoyed and got a lot out of the critique sessions. Let's abandon the formal structure (officers, etc) and just go with meeting monthly and discussing our work. Except no one was willing to even make sure there was a meeting leader and remind people of the next meeting. I had just been co-chair for the previous 3 years and felt I had done my share. With no one else stepping in the group just faded away.

So what is it that keeps a group going? Everybody wanted the benefit of the group and nobody wanted to put out any effort. And the final blow was that there were personality conflicts. It's not necessary to like everybody in a small group, but if there are people who drive you nuts, it's difficult to enjoy the meeting.

Baby Quilts

I made two quick baby quilts this past week. Both used the same pattern but totally different fabrics. The pattern is something I made up although I'm sure it's not original. There are three different variations on the blocks: some are 9 patches, some 4 patches, and some a combination of large and small squares. Once everything is sewn together, it all looks much more complicated than it really is.

The first one is Yellow. Very, very yellow. It's a gift for a friend of my son's who is having her baby next month. She doesn't know the gender and wants it to be a surprise. Back in my day it wasn't an option - it was always a surprise.





The second one is for my newest great (or is it grand) nephew, born last month. I went through my box of African motif fabrics and chose a random selection. The blocks are the same as the yellow quilt but with the different fabrics, it has a totally different feeling.



I'm meeting with the woman who is going to quilt my new bed quilt on Monday. I told her I would prepare the binding. It's a good thing because I cut the strips and came up too short. I needed 11 strips and the piece of fabric I dyed only was wide enough to get 10 strips. And even though I dyed some other fabric at the same time with the same dye solution, it doesn't match well enough to cut one strip from the other fabric. So I dyed another piece today and I sure hope it's enough. I calculated that I would get 12 strips. And I thought it would be neat to have narrow yellow lines crossing the binding strips and had to think a while on how to do that without getting green somewhere. The solution was to dye the fabric blue then use opaque fabric paint to make the lines. Seems to have worked.

So enough playing around - it's time to get back to the business of art.

I Voted

Today is the 'Potomac Primary' - Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. This is the first time since I've lived in Maryland that the Presidential primary hasn't been a done deal by the time we get to vote. And we even got visits from all the candidates, something that doesn't even happen during the Presidential election. Maryland is so Democratic that everybody sees it as a given. Democratic candidates spend their time in states where they have to fight and Republican candidates see us as a lost cause. So it's actually exciting to have a primary that has some suspense. I wonder if the turnout will reflect that or will there be the usual apathy. So far the turnout has been 'slow but steady' and I imagine the sleet isn't helping any. The prediction is that 39% of the voters will turn out. I don't understand why people don't bother to cast their ballots; they're sure ready to complain when they don't like what happens. My feeling is that you have no right to complain if you don't vote.

Dilemma

Aside - I thought 'dilemma' was derived from Latin and that perhaps the plural would be dilemmae, plural feminine (I took Latin in High School, many decades ago). But in looking it up, I found that it originally derives from Greek di meaning two and lemma meaning proposition. And the first definition is "a situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives". That's not exactly what I am using the word to mean, so went on to the second definition "any difficult or perplexing situation or problem." That's the one.

So if you're still reading...my dilemma is that there are some wonderful exhibition opportunities in the near future and all with entry deadlines in the next two weeks. The problem is that I don't want to enter old work because, well, because. But all my new work is either committed to another show that will overlap the time period, or entered into a show and I haven't yet heard back about the jurying. Which makes them unavailable until they are either accepted or rejected. So I will be passing on this current crop.

I did recently send in an entry to be considered for a solo show in Frederick, MD. They're looking for exhibits for 2 years in the future, which is a good time frame. I have a solo show coming up in October of this year and so one in 2009 or 2010 would be excellent. Their committee only meets 3 or 4 times a year, so I have no idea when I will hear back.

And in September is the entry for Quilt National 2009 and I plan to enter that one. Except this time I won't wait until August to make entries. That hasn't worked in the past, obviously. A good strategy would be to make lots of work between now and then and then select the best pieces and I would hope I have a good selection from which to pick. Entry forms aren't available until next month, according to their web site.

I will be going to the SDA/SAQA Joint Conference in early April, taking Judy Langille's workshop, looking forward to that big time. And then the day after I return I'm going to Chicago to visit family which will also give me the opportunity to spend a day at the IQF show. I went to that show the first time it was in Chicago but haven't been since. I've also been to the Houston version, only once, and was overwhelmed by the opportunities to spend money. And the quilts were nice, also. I plan to be at the Chicago show on Friday the 11th and will spend several hours in the SAQA booth. Stop by if you're there!

Back to Work

I've pretty much taken the last month off from doing 'art'. I've made the bed quilt top and two charity quilts for my guild. And of course Christmas was in there. And yesterday I celebrated (?) my 60th birthday. So now it's time to stop drifting and get back to work.

Except I seem to be a little low on inspiration. I spent time cleaning up my studio yesterday, and it's not just a way to avoid working. I have to put away all the fabric that I was using in order to clear the work space and also clear my mind. And while doing that I pulled pieces that appealed to me at the moment and stuck them up on the design wall. Unfortunately, they not only don't seem to be talking to me, they aren't talking to each other. At this point, I have to force myself to stay in the room and try to work something out.

Start small, cut pieces apart, stick them up, move them around, take them down, work on the composition, think about throwing some paint. Right now what seems to be rising to the top are fabrics that have circle patterns on them and I may just go with that. But first I need to add a little more pizazz to some of the fabrics so I'm getting out the paint.

So no more procrastinating. Back to the studio.

Dyeing in Winter - Part 2

Success! The colors in these images aren't quite true, but they're close. The 3rd one is a lot darker and the blue markings aren't so obvious. But it worked. I think I would have gotten an even more deep purple if I had the patience to let the dyes work longer. But then maybe not, some of the dyes were quite old. The 3+ yard pieces were so unwieldy I decided to do the rinse in the washing machine. So after unwinding them, which was a struggle not splashing dye all over the place, I put them in the washer and set it to rinse with cold water. Oh so much easier. Then added the Synthropol detergent and ran them through the wash. The final rinse wasn't quite clear, so it got another rinse run through. I haven't ironed these yet, I was hoping a mangle would show up on my doorstep, but I don't think that's going to happen.




This piece is going to be the binding. It will end up as about 400 inches long. Something else I'm not looking forward to pressing.

But I'm thrilled that I'm not going to have to wrestle this through my sewing machine. The quilter has booked me for mid-March so I will just have to be patient until then.

Dyeing in Winter

For my bed quilt I need to dye fabric for the backing and the binding. Dyeing fabric in winter is always a problem. Dyes need a minimum temperature of 70 degrees F in order to react and bind to the fabric. My house is heated to 68 degrees and with the cost of heating oil, it's really wasteful to burn the oil to raise the temperature 2 degrees. However, in the living room is a heating vent right below a huge window. During the winter the sun streams in this window and heats up the room. And I can trap the heat coming out of the vent by making a tent with plastic. So this little setup has been sitting for 24 hours and I'm about ready to wash out the fabrics. This technique has worked before but this time I'm using Turquoise as one of the dyes. The problem with turquoise is that it's a big, fat molecule and it needs warmer temperatures and longer time to react. The color looks fabulous in the pot but until it's all rinsed and washed it's difficult to tell if it has had sufficient time and heat to react.

So there are 2 - 3 yard pieces wound and twisted that I hope will have a sort of shibori look, another 3/4 yard in another pot in which I did a fair amount of smushing so that it will have a more even and less mottled look for the binding. And since I had a lot of dye solution left I ripped off another 2 yards and stuck that in a pot also. No point in throwing good dye down the drain. So now I'm ready to wash it out. Stand by, news at 11.

A "Real" Quilt

Every once in a while I have the urge to do a "real" quilt, that is, one that actually goes onto a bed. I have a double Irish chain, blue and white, on my bed that I made 20 years ago. It's hand quilted by me and it took 4 years to do the quilting. Let me mention that after I finished that quilt, I sold the frame, knowing I would never be hand quilting like that again. This quilt is getting faded and has a few little rips and the binding is wearing out and I think it's time to retire it.

So I have been pondering what kind of pattern I should use to make a new bed quilt. I'm not so good at doing the exact same block 100 times and some of my sewing skills are a little rusty, particularly the ones for precision cutting and matching points. I've always loved the log cabin pattern and so I decided to use that construction method but not the color patterning. I also thought about buying some commercial fabrics to make this but after looking at all the boxes of fabric I have dyed, painted, screened, printed, etc it would be a crime to go out and spend money on something I already have way too much of.

The room is blue and yellow, a nice combination for a quilt. I cut loads of blue strips freehand and a bunch of yellow strips freehand and commenced sewing it all together without benefit of ruler or concern about the shape that my blocks assumed. Since the strips were not consistent in width, many of the blocks turned out a bit wacky. The final blocks needed to be 9.5" wide, so I just kept adding strips until the blocks were big enough to trim down to 9.5". Some needed more extra strips than others. So after I made 124 blocks (needed 121 but did 3 extra) it was time to start arranging. Not all of the blocks had yellow in them but I wanted those that did to show on the top of the bed so I started with the center section first. Here is a portion.



Couldn't resist doing a few renegade blocks - split circle blocks and 4 patch blocks - after all there needs to be some variety. This picture is only a portion; the center section is 7x7 blocks and now what's left to sew together are the outside edge blocks. Some of those blocks will have small bits of yellow and the rest will be all blue. The final size will be nearly 100"x100" and I am going to hire somebody to quilt it. Some of my guild member friends do long arm quilting and so I've contracted with one of them to do this. I think her prices are quite reasonable; she supplies the batting and will apply the binding. I will be dyeing some fabric for the backing. Although I will have to do the final turn and hand stitch the binding down, it's a whole lot less work than quilting this monster. I would be back in physical therapy for my shoulders.

Out of the Past

Many years ago, nearly 40, before I was married, I spent a month in Los Angeles working for a film producer. Not the Hollywood big screen type, but someone who made 16 mm educational films. He was friends with my employer, who sold educational films. So I had an opportunity to see what it was like to make these little films. I don't remember all that much about the endeavor except for the one day that we went to William Talman's house to made an anti-smoking ad. William Talman played the character of Hamilton Burger on the old Perry Mason series; he was the DA who never won a case. We spent the entire day there, filming his children and wife, and then him talking about the lung cancer that was killing him and was the result of years of smoking. I think he said that he started smoking when he was 12. He died 6 weeks after we did the ad and before it was ever aired.

Over the years I have occasionally thought about this ad and wondered if it still existed. Last night at dinner we were talking about how it seems that anything anybody does now gets posted on YouTube, and I thought that maybe somebody had put it up on YouTube. A short search later and I found it.


Here it is. I didn't realize at the time that it was the first anti-smoking ad. Even more interesting is that about 15 years ago I worked with someone who had quit smoking after she saw that ad. I have never smoked so I don't know how difficult it is to stop. All I know is that lung cancer is a very painful way to die and I hope that those who do smoke find the strength and support they need to quit.